A cryptocurrency hedge fund that manages $42 million and is backed by prominent venture capital firms fired a top trader in September, resulting in lawsuits that suggest the hedge fund was launched amid disarray while the mania over Bitcoin and Ethereum raged.

BlockTower Capital has sued its former trader, Gustavo Miguel, who separately sued the hedge fund and its two co-founders, Ari Paul and Matthew Goetz, claiming he was cheated out of salary payments and his ownership stake in BlockTower.

Paul, a former portfolio manager at the University of Chicago’s endowment, and Goetz, who was a vice president at Goldman Sachs, launched BlockTower in Stamford, Ct., in the summer.

Gustavo MiguelPhoto provided by Gustavo Miguel

Both Paul and Goetz have been publicly vocal about the cryptocurrency euphoria that has fueled the formation of several cryptocurrency hedge funds, often giving interviews to media outlets covering the cryptocurrency boom (Paul has been a contributor to Forbes). BlockTower’s hedge fund is backed by Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, a court document says.

A graduate of Stanford University, Miguel, 36, is a former Morgan Stanley proprietary trader who also worked at a hedge fund. BlockTower hired Miguel in August for what the hedge fund describes as a trading position. Miguel claims he was the cryptocurrency hedge fund’s portfolio manager. He was fired after a nearly six-week run.

BlockTower sued Miguel in October, trying to get a Connecticut state judge to declare Miguel has no ownership in the hedge fund. In its 13-page complaint, BlockTower claims it fired Miguel because his refusal to communicate with his bosses during trading hours while he worked from his Los Angeles home presented a risk to investors.

The hedge fund says Miguel was distracted by his side projects, including an advisory business he started with former football star Eric Dickerson, and that “with millions of dollars of assets under his control” and the authority to execute hedge fund trades by himself, BlockTower was concerned that Miguel “had gone ‘rogue.’”

According to a 15-page complaint filed in California state court in Los Angeles, Miguel claims his former bosses are “a couple of ‘used car salesman’ selling a bill of goods.” He says the hedge fund was unprepared when it started trading in August with $6 million in assets.

The way Miguel tells it, when he arrived at BlockTower’s office on August 10, it was essentially empty—no desk top computers, telephone lines or Internet connection. He says accounts set up with exchanges and Over The Counter desks were incomplete. For four days prior to the hedge fund launch, the BlockTower partners connected to the Internet through a hotspot connection that slowed down Internet transactions to a snail’s pace, the complaint says.

“BlockTower’s office looked like the aftermath of a fire sale of a bankrupted business,” Miguel’s complaint says. “On the day before the launch of the BlockTower hedge fund, the promised cutting-edge trading and risk management tools were nonexistent and BlockTower did not have basic items such as position spreadsheets, real-time profit and loss statements and trade transactions.”

The hedge fund’s launch was delayed because of a bureaucratic error that caused BlockTower to refund the investment of a small investor, the complaint says, and when BlockTower finally did open for trading on August 15, Miguel claims he had to wake up Paul in order to alert him to a Bitcoin trading opportunity, saving him from “incompetence.”

Miguel’s complaint makes some nonsensical insinuations, suggesting for example that Paul wanted Miguel to engage in insider trading, even though it’s unclear how such a violation of securities law would apply to cryptocurrency trading. Miguel does not elaborate or give any details regarding this accusation.

Miguel’s complaint boasts that Miguel was responsible for an “unprecedented 30% return in the month of August” and offers examples of his winning Bitcoin and Ethereum trading while deriding Paul as a blundering and “irresponsible” day trader.

BlockTower, which intends to fight Miguel’s lawsuit vigorously, says Miguel’s accusations “are false, lack any basis in fact and are clearly designed to harass BlockTower.”

Paul and Goetz locked Miguel out of is BlockTower email account and froze his ability to trade on behalf of the hedge fund in the middle of September. Miguel wants the hedge fund to acknowledge the 3.5% ownership stake he says he was orally promised by BlockTower’s founders. BlockTower claims Miguel was told he would be eligible to earn a 3.5% ownership stake and that the hedge fund offered him a generous severance deal, including sending him a check for his wages.

In a statement, BlockTower says it “severed ties with Mr. Miguel in mid-September because of performance issues and concerns about his accountability and communication as a trader.” The hedge fund also says its “returns are up considerably since Mr. Miguel’s departure.”

“I was brought on board because they have a combined zero years of hedge fund investing experience,” Miguel said in an interview. “When the launch happened they were overwhelmed.”

I am a senior editor at Forbes who likes digging into Wall Street, hedge funds and private equity firms, looking for both the good and the bad. I also focus on the intersection of business and the law.